Early Life
Styrene was born in 1957 in Bromley, Kent, and raised in Brixton, London. Her mother, who raised her alone, was a Scottish-Irish legal secretary. Her father was a dispossessed Somali aristocrat.
As a teenager, Styrene was a "barefoot hippie". At age 15, she ran away from home with £3 in her pocket, and hitchhiked from one music festival to another, staying at hippie crash pads. She thought of this as a challenge to survive. The adventure ended when she stepped on a rusty nail while bathing in a stream and had to be treated for septicaemia.
After seeing the Sex Pistols performance at the Pier Pavillion Hastings on 3 July 1976 (her 19th birthday) she thought that anyone could do what they were doing and so decided to form the punk band X-Ray Spex. She eventually became a passionate feminist and posted a blog dedicated to women's rights and defence of women.
Read more about this topic: Poly Styrene
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